Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday March 13, 2014 @12:11PM
from the autocratic-state-being-one dept.

SpankiMonki writes "Following on the heels of the Mt Gox bankruptcy, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) plans to impose new regulations on currency exchanges dealing in bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Virtual currency exchanges would need to verify their customers' identities and report any suspicious transactions under the new rules.

I think the BitCoin community is doing a pretty good job of ruining the currency on their own without government help

Of course it is. You just keep right on thinking that. It's doing such a good job that you don't have scams like Mt Gox or other exchanges just vanishing in the night. Naw, nobody is out almost a half a billion dollars because of a poorly run exchange or just outright theft. Damn, skippy its doing a fine job.

Hey, how would you like to buy a bridge? It's in New York state right outside of Brooklyn. Only 400,000 bitcoins.

I think the BitCoin community is doing a pretty good job of ruining the currency on their own without government help

Of course it is. You just keep right on thinking that. It's doing such a good job that you don't have scams like Mt Gox or other exchanges just vanishing in the night. Naw, nobody is out almost a half a billion dollars because of a poorly run exchange or just outright theft. Damn, skippy its doing a fine job.

Lord Apathy, I don't think you read very carefully. Bobbied said that it was doing a pretty good job of ruining the currency [on its own without government help], not that it was doing a pretty good job.

Not to worry, even though I had written the work "ruining" and knew what it was supposed to say, I had to re-read it a few times to make sure it didn't say "running" which is really similar looking. It's an interesting insight into how our minds actually do this reading task. Many times we see what our minds are expecting to see even though something else is really there.

You should see the moderation history of my post. I expected some disagreement but general agreement, but nothing like what happened. It

What's needed is ,
1 Truly anonymous
2 Eco friendly ( at least relatively )
3 Sensible and sustainable ( agnostic of governments )
4 scam proof ( at least to a large extent )
You did a good job Satoshi (whoever you are ) but not good enough.

The real problem here is the knee-jerk reaction the government always has when it's unleashed upon a new frontier. TFA mentions regulations that require exchanges to properly identify themselves, and other good bureaucratic record keeping nonsense. However, TFA does not mention ONE WORD about security audits on the source code, proper firewall configuration, and other technical assurances that would solve the actual problems and prevent thieves (CEOs and otherwise) from causing a repeat of Mt. Gox.

Virtual currency exchanges would need to verify their customers' identities and report any suspicious transactions under the new rules.... tailored specifically to the money-laundering and terrorism financing risks they posed

Step 1: create an anonymous currency to allay the paranoid fears that governments are tracking everything you do with your own money.Step 2: create rules that anyone using the currency has to be identified to the government to allay the paranoid fears that anyone could send money to anyone else anonymously.

The main benefits are: the government is not allowed to print money (devaluing what you own), and there is no centralized middleman that is able to block your transactions or freeze your assets (as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal usually do).

Yes, it takes a brand new invention called a pickpocket. Or a weapon. True, that happens with cash too- but it happens to a fraction of what you own, because the rest is in a bank. With the wallet on a USB stick, its your life savings.

You are supposed to encrypt your wallet. In fact you should be able to leave your encrypted wallet in a public place it doesn't need to be on a thumb drive. You can have it freely available on a website.

Encryption is harder to crack than other ways of stealing from people. We use encryption for almost all e-commerce and banking right now. It's not impossible to circumvent it, but it's hard enough that it happens only rarely.

The best you can do is make the human the weakest link in the chain (i.e. everything else is stronger), and mitigate the number of things that a human must do correctly to achieve proper security.

That's irrelevant. 6% of the total bitcoins were involved in a "possible corruption scheme". In theory, the public blockchain in supposed to shed light on the situation. But that does not seem to be happening.

... and the ledger is public, everyone can check for possible corruption schemes. And the cost per transaction is much lower.

I thought that verifying the transactions took a lot longer and that currently there's a cap on the number of transactions that the Bitcoin network can handle. So while the fees charged today might be lower, the real costs of handling Bitcoin transactions is high and it may not be scalable enough.

A bigger problem in my mind than government controlling money, is money controlling governments.

Anyway it seems that you are far more at risk of not being able to access your wallet with Bitcoin than you are to having your assets frozen with traditional currencies, - assuming that you aren't actively engaged in some illegal activity. And it would also seem that Bitcoin has found a number of very effective ways of getting devalued in spite of the fact that you can't print more of it.

There are a lot more things that a currency needs to be protected from than just the government.

Inflation devalues your money in a predictable way. While that may not be optimal, it is much better than not knowing how much your currency can buy you from one minute to the next.

Having people be their own bank is fraught with problems and is not a realistic approach to storing currency. How many people do you know that even have adequate backups for their personal data? Why do you think banks exist in the first place?

of course they can and do, steal real wallets at knifepoint. also, knife wielding home invaders aren't the most technologically adept demographic, and are more likely to just steal your laptop and pawn it.

I forgot which one, but there is a country where game currency earned needs to be mentioned when doing taxes because the government see this as income and wants to get income taxes on it (even if you don't get real money from it).

You bitcoin guys think you can push buttons on your computer and code around the system. So naive.Sorry to be a pessimist, but they can just say anyone transferring bitcoin to another party without going through a KYC compliant intermediary is money laundering and then send the swat team out to whatever ip they can track down via NSA whatever. Game. Set. Match. Banks win as usual, all done. They'll take it down just like Pirate Bay, et